Sandcastles To Michael Let me smell you--   your scent of sand, and early mornings,      and dirt underneath fingernails. The smell of an eight year old boy   stumbling down the stairs,      rubbing sleep from his eyes,         grinning awkwardly at me,            as I sit curled up on the couch,                reading King Arthur--     waiting for him, and fearing him--what do I know about little boys? "Wanna play in my sandbox?" he asks, and we build sand banks, sand malls, sand mansions, and try to make sense of our sand world, and we talk as we build of basketball stars, of the boys at school, of what his mom said last night. And when we can't make sense of it, we drop bombs on our sand world. We stomp it, scatter it, kick the grains high in the air,   burying Matchbox cars,      smothering plastic army men,             losing watches and coins in the rubble. And then, reverently,    we smooth the sand again, refuse to use shovels, only our hands to caress it until it is soft,    bring buckets of water to flow through rivers-- and this time when we build castles, they are bigger, better, with three storeys, moats, windows, doors, and this time,    he pats together a long hall-way,         joining his castle to mine. And you must have been a little boy once    plowing dirt fields with sticks and tiny tractors underneath swingsets. And now we try to make sense of the world    with paper and ink        and these words--But You smell like sand, and early mornings,   and dirt underneath fingernails. And maybe what we really need to do    is touch one another's hands    as we build sandcastles.                          --Revised December 2, 2001